


Breathe With Me

by MissMegh



Series: First Kiss Challenges [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Offscreen Destruction Of Property, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 09:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11181462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMegh/pseuds/MissMegh
Summary: Hux has difficulty working with Kylo Ren. He didn't realize Ren has the same problem.





	Breathe With Me

**Author's Note:**

> For [MellytheHun's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun) and my kiss prompt exchange!
> 
> Prompt: Pressing foreheads together while kissing.

General Hux had a very distinct, even tread. All his officers knew it by now. They could keep time by the way he paced the bridge, and the more observant ones could gauge the severity of a situation by small variations in speed and sound. Harder steps meant others ought to tread lightly; a faster pace meant everyone else should step it up.

The sound of the General’s boots on the durasteel now had the entire crew scrambling to get out of his path.

His hat and greatcoat were somewhere back on the bridge, and for once Hux didn’t give a damn. Extra articles of clothing would only be further readily-available objects to throw at Kylo fucking Ren, and Hux was fond of his coat. He refused to give Ren an excuse to ruin it like he did everything else aboard Hux’s ship.

The _Finalizer_ was _his_ ship, damn it; Hux was the first General to serve aboard her, and she was his first command as General. He knew her and her crew better than he knew the walls of his own quarters. Ren only seemed to recognize that he was _on_ a ship once he was through wrecking it. Snoke could hand his pet Knight all the high command posts he wanted; it didn’t mean Ren deserved them. Worse, Ren didn’t even seem to want a command; when he did put in an appearance, it was only to terrorize the crew, disregard as many protocols as possible, and systematically turn every room on the ship into slag. Hux had barely had ten words’ conversation with the man in the four months he’d known him, and most of that had been in front of the Supreme Leader. No matter the official record, Hux refused to share his command with a maniac.

Mitaka’s rather panicked alert had placed Ren near the conference rooms closest to the aft hangars, and the smoky tang of plasma burns plus visibly shaken stormtrooper patrols tended to agree with him. Hux forged grimly onward, mentally tallying every scorch mark and slashed viewscreen to be added to Ren’s continuous debt to the _Finalizer._

The trail ended at the biggest room in the sector, its door and frame mangled and the interior dark except for sadly flickering bits of electronics and the occasional spark from their exposed wires. Hux stepped over the remains of a courier droid on his way into the room, tamped down the invective he _wanted_ to express, and barked into the darkness, “Ren!”

No answer. No noise at all, really. Hux frowned. Had Ren left already? He couldn’t see anything yet, certainly not Ren’s mad fire-sword. If Ren had snuck off to do further damage to Hux’s ship, Hux would damage _him,_ Snoke’s favor be damned.

He nearly turned around, nearly left to hunt elsewhere, but a flare of sparks from the ruined holotable reflected oddly off some soft, wild surface, and Hux cautiously stepped toward it.

Hair, he realized. Dark hair, half-hidden in dark robes and shielding a face already buried in folded arms and bent knees.

Ren was curled up behind the wreck of the holotable, so small and still that Hux wasn’t entirely sure it was him. Why had Ren taken off his helmet? What was going on?

He didn’t move as Hux came closer, and that alone made Hux hesitate. Maybe he should get medics in here. He didn’t see or smell any blood, but there were a lot of loose wires, and perhaps enough electricity could fell even a Knight of Ren.

Ren’s shoulders twitched, the smallest sound Hux had ever heard curling out of him.

His voice still sounded odd without the modulator. Too human. It had been easier, back when Snoke had first presented Ren with his command, when he might still have been some sophisticated battle droid made in black. Back when Hux hadn’t known what he looked like, hadn’t known about doeish brown eyes and the way his lips twisted down when Hux argued against him. Kylo Ren wasn’t supposed to be so human, or so young. Yet here he was, too young and too human, surrounded by the wreck of Hux’s least favorite conference room, and now that one noise had trickled out of him they weren’t stopping.

Was Ren _crying?_

“Ren,” Hux tried again, knowing he sounded stiff as a board and hating both his voice and the fact that he was here at all. By now he was certain that no one but him had high enough clearance to be in this room right now, and he was equally certain that he should be anywhere else. He wasn’t equipped to deal with this. He had no idea what to do with his unstable new co-commander crying in a shattered conference room for no discernible reason, and it should _not_ be his duty. He was neither a babysitter nor a therapist. His single, mandatory visit with the military psychologist had ended with the doctor near tears and Hux demanding that the medical board screen their applicants more stringently. He was not equipped to examine his own psyche, much less repair someone else’s. This was _not his job._

“Stop,” Ren ground out, “talking.”

“I’m _not."_ Hux couldn’t help the indignant tone. Except for Ren’s name, he hadn’t said a damned word for the last full minute. The only real sound was Ren’s labored breathing, wet and desperate in the singed air.

“Not out loud.” Each word sounded as if Ren were dragging it out of his jaw like an abscessed tooth. “Thoughts. Stop. Thinking.”

“Stop _reading my mind,_ then!” Fury and panic lit up very old sections of Hux’s mind, his shoulders aching with tension. Snoke had said that no Knight of Ren would invade his thoughts, he’d promised, Ren had _said—_

“M’not.” It was whispered, and Ren’s head tucked further into his arms. “Too loud. Stop. Can’t.”

 _Stars,_ this was unnerving. Hux had personally seen Ren take a blaster bolt to the shoulder without flinching, but here he was, cringing away from Hux because his _mind_ was too loud? Hux forced himself to inhale slowly, counting backwards from twenty. He attempted to think quietly.

Ren’s shivering noises quieted as well, so Hux counted it a success of sorts. He still didn’t know how the bloody hell to proceed. He finally cleared his throat, trying to shake the strange stasis of the ruined space.

“Care to explain?”

No vocal response. Hux could swear Ren’s shoulders curled in tighter, though.

_Like a beaten dog._

_"Stop,"_ Ren pleaded. Hux’s shoulders stiffened at the raw, ragged edges of Ren’s voice. Begging. Ren was _begging,_ like a child—like a boy who had long since stopped expecting that word to hold any weight when he said it.

It should have been a triumph, or at least an opportunity. Kylo Ren, Jedi Killer, terror of the _Finalizer,_ cowering at Hux’s feet. Hadn’t he fantasized about this? Hadn’t he planned what he would say when the day came that Ren realized how petty his Force powers were, when he didn’t have the discipline to truly use them?

Ren made another whipped-dog noise. He was trembling, Hux realized.

Hux crouched down to get a better look. Ren was a mess, more than usual; his ridiculous hair was everywhere, his robes singed and tugged out of place, pieces missing. Hux couldn’t see his face at all, he was curled so tightly around himself.

“Ren.” He forced his voice to even, measuring out the tone and curbing the edges. That damned wooden tone again. He tried not to feel as if he were about to pour alcohol on a fire in an effort to put it out. There wasn’t any other choice. “What happened?”

For a long few seconds, there was nothing. Then, silent and slow, Ren lifted his head just enough for Hux to catch the dull shine of eyes and a long line of nose.

“S’gone.”

“What’s gone?” Aside from several thousand credits’ worth of First Order equipment, anyway. Hux kept his voice as dispassionate as he could.

“He—” Ren swallowed audibly; his voice tore raggedly in the air, raw and damp. “He’s gone. The. The medium.”

“You were looking for him?”

A nod.

“Why?”

This was, Hux reasoned, one of the only opportunities he might ever have to get Ren to explain himself; he might as well take advantage. If Ren was talking, he wasn’t wrecking anything or unsettling Hux with his attempts to impersonate a star collapsing into a black hole. Therefore, Ren should keep talking.

If only he had the damn helmet on; the modulator was easier to deal with than that low voice, the husk of it staggering like some broken-legged deer desperate to get away.

“Force. It was. He...”

Hux could hear Ren swallow again, see the dip of his head at the convulsion of it.

“Snoke ordered it. Bring them. Kill them—” another swallow, his voice thickening and fading with every word “—I failed.”

Hux waited for a moment, but that seemed to be all the words Ren had to offer. He supposed that was enough, really. The Order wasn’t kind to those who failed. Hux had never seen Snoke personally punish someone for failure, but if anyone merited Snoke’s personal attention, the Master of the Knights of Ren surely did. It seemed such a small error, though, and one easily remedied, if Snoke had ordered Ren to hunt Force-users. No one could run forever, and whatever Ren’s other qualities, he was a bloodthirsty hunter.

Yet here he was.

Hux studied Ren’s too-rapid breathing, the fine tremor of his big frame, the still-wet sounds that spoke of tears. He ran Ren’s words through his head. _I failed._

There was a part of Hux that wanted to go for the kill. Here was Ren, his insecurities laid open like fresh wounds, as easy a target as Hux had ever seen. For all his strength and wizardry, his vaunted lineage, the shelter of Snoke’s favor, Kylo Ren was just a man. He wouldn’t be the first Hux had tipped into disaster, and certainly not the last. It was easy. He’d been doing it since his academy years. Since that first amateur boy had found the Commandant’s son shivering in a corner and tried to turn it to his advantage.

Hux forced the sour taste in his mouth away, ran a hand over his mouth. _Stop it. Focus._

“Does Snoke know yet?”

A hiccup, maybe an attempt at laughter. Did Knights of Ren do anything so mundane as laugh?

“Haven’t told him. But. Probably.”

The waver of that last word shook itself out in Ren’s body, and his head dropped onto his knees. His arms slumped down his legs, nerveless and forgotten.

“He’ll summon me. He’ll know. He knows what I do.”

“Does he know about… this?” _The wanton destruction of First Order property,_ Hux meant to say, but it battled against _the way you hide from his judgment like a death row criminal,_ so neither quite made it past his teeth.

“He knows,” Ren whispered, and his breath thinned, tightened, rising too fast and too shallow. His fingers gripped his thighs as if he’d tear into them, outright shuddering now. If Ren were a ship in atmo, Hux would have said he was about to tear to pieces.

It would be so easy to break him. A few words, and there would be no more ‘co-commander Ren.’ Hux would have his _Finalizer,_ the way it was meant to be.

All he could see, though, was the holopad blurring in front of his eyes the first time he’d searched for _chest pains, starred vision, numb hands, weakness._ He’d been convinced it was a heart attack, that his own pathetic body was going to give out on him before he was twelve. It had seemed logical at the time. Everything else about him was a failure; why not his heart?

Hux reached out and pulled Ren’s face up, pushed his shoulders back, untrained and too rough as a result. Ren didn’t resist at all, dark eyes wide and glazed under his tangled hair. He was still breathing too fast.

If Snoke’s protégé died right in front of Hux, he was quite sure he wouldn’t remain a General for long. Hux muttered a curse and forced Ren’s legs down as well, kneeling between them to tilt his head back. “Breathe, Ren.” Then, louder: _"Look at me."_

Ren’s eyes snapped to Hux’s, wild, and for an instant Hux wasn’t certain of the gravity holding him to the deck; he was too close, too easy to reach, and wasn’t Ren a feral animal, an attack dog bred and bought? But it was too late to back out now, so Hux held his gaze, and said, “Breathe.”

The wildness in Ren’s eyes uncoiled, slowly, but he gulped down air like he was trying to drown in it. It had to hurt, but when had that ever stopped Ren from doing anything? Hux bit down on a frustrated command and inhaled instead. Seven seconds in—stale sweat and the tang of burned plasteel—and seven seconds out, leaving him hollow of everything that had been there before. He counted it slow and steady in his head, trying uncertainly to push it to the forefront where Ren might hear it. Was that too loud? He couldn’t tell. There were still tears on Ren’s face.

He flattened his hand against Ren’s chest, resting but not pressing. “Push it out. Focus on this. Keep going.” There was phantom pressure on his own chest, the remembered warmth of his eleven-year-old hand pitiful but grounding. Or perhaps he was just panicking too. _No. Not right now._ “Breathe with me. Breathe.”

Ren breathed. He struggled with the pace, the depth, but he breathed. Hux counted it off in his head; voiced, it sounded much too juvenile, and he had to stop out of sheer embarrassment after less than two counts in. The mental count was a sufficient metronome. If it was _too loud,_ Ren didn’t complain. His eyes closed, head tipping forward as his shoulders and neck loosened, the strings of him unwinding almost too slowly to see.

Hux didn’t realize how much he’d drifted toward that gradual softness until Ren’s hair brushed his brow, soft and damp and clinging. Ren’s breath hitched, and Hux’s quickened just a little, but he kept the rhythm somehow, in and out, deep and sighing, slower every time.

Between one inhalation and another—he couldn’t have said which ones—the ghost of Hux’s eleven-year-old self faded away. Snoke’s oppressive miasma had gone, too. At least for now. It was just the two of them, sitting there, bracing their heads together. Ren’s lashes were long and dark against his cheeks; it felt like spying to see them like that, damp and fluttering. Hux kept watching anyway. He memorized the tear tracks and the redness, the bitten marks in Ren’s absurd lower lip, the curls clinging to his cheeks.

Ren was not supposed to be this human, because Hux could not unknow this. He could not unfeel the warmth of their mingled breath. He could not unrealize how Ren’s chest rose and fell with his.

Those dark eyelashes flickered, and it didn’t occur to Hux to draw back when Ren tilted his head up, their foreheads still gently together. He didn’t flinch when their noses bumped, or when Ren’s pressed into his cheek; he only adjusted to it. Yet the softness of Ren’s lips surprised him, enough that the kiss was warmer and wetter than either of them must have intended, and certainly had more teeth in the way of it.

He couldn’t even think of all the questions this raised with Ren’s mouth on his, so Hux drew back, blinking and off-center. Ren pulled away too, turning his head with his shoulders rising to his ears. Hux had only just gotten him out of that posture. He made a soft impatient noise, and tipped Ren’s chin back toward him.

Ren’s eyes were down, his brows drawn together, his mouth tight. Hux could hear all that tension in Ren’s breathing again, so he leaned in and softened it.

He’d been shivering before, but right now Ren was so warm to kiss.

“Hux,” Ren breathed when they parted again, low and soft.

Hux hadn’t know his name could sound that soft. That _Ren_ could sound that soft. Where was the sharp rap of consonants, the harsh crackle of a modulator? How was Hux on his knees, with his fingers stroking Kylo Ren’s cheek?

He made himself sit back, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket, but he couldn’t stop his tongue from sliding over his lips, keeping the metallic taste of Ren for itself. Ren watched him, eyes dark as space, the drape of his hand against the floor suddenly obscene in its lassitude. How could someone seem so small in one moment and loom so large the next? Ren hadn’t even sat up yet.

Standing was more difficult than it should have been. Hux told himself that he would risk electrocution if he fell, and the unnerving wobbliness of his knees had absolutely nothing to do with it, so extra caution was completely warranted. He was still a commanding officer aboard this ship, and even in front of his co-commander he ought not to stumble.

Extending a hand to Ren, helping him up, could not possibly be a good idea, but he did and Ren accepted it without comment.

“Your debrief with Snoke,” Hux said abruptly. “I should come. With you.”

Ren’s blank gaze fell quickly to an expression of alarm. “Hux, I—the Supreme Leader will… you can’t. He… dislikes surprises.”

It was the weakest phrase Hux could remember Ren forming, but the tense line of Ren’s jaw spoke to a far stronger incentive behind the words. Hux remembered waiting outside the Academy office, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes early, because an officer had to value punctuality above all other social graces. _I dislike waiting, cadet. Never make me wait again._

“Very well,” he said. “Then tell him… tell him I have some suggestions regarding your access to requisitions. That includes troops. You’ll be much faster with them.”

“Stormtroopers can’t keep up with me,” Ren said, and the flat arrogance in his tone dragged the corners of Hux’s mouth up even as he rolled his eyes.

“They’re not meant to. They’re shiny and white and look impressive, and people shit their trousers when they hear them coming. Scare tactics _work,_ Ren,” he overrode whatever Ren had been about to argue. “I’m sure the Force is useful for your particular style, but not everyone _knows_ that. They know what stormtroopers can do, and they’ll move faster because of it.”

Ren was silent for a moment, studying the helmet in his hands intently enough that Hux didn’t immediately realize that Ren was addressing him and not the plasteel the next time he spoke.

“I’m meant to… to do it myself. Like I always have.” It was quiet, clipped by the strange cadence Ren’s words always carried. Hesitant.

“Yes, well,” Hux made himself sound more arch than he felt, “you’ve never co-commanded a star destroyer before. I imagine that changes the rules a bit.”

The look Ren gave him—how did one person’s eyes get so wide, so deep?—made Hux wonder in half a panic if Ren was about to kiss him again. It faded before Hux could wonder what he’d done to cause it, and Ren settled his helmet back into place, pulling what remained of his cowl back over it.

“I’ll tell him,” Ren said, the buzz of his modulator doing its best to drown out the softness of dark eyes and pale skin in Hux’s memory. There was still some humanity, though, in the way Ren hesitated before he turned, in the way he excused himself with a simple, respectful “General.”

It was enough, Hux thought, to guarantee that the feel of Ren’s lips against his would never fade.

Hux drew in a breath, let it out, and headed back toward the bridge with measured steps.


End file.
